How safe your building is, is paramount for all businesses. From large corporations to small family businesses, there is much to consider when deciding what equipment and measures are required for the safety of the office.

Whether it is regularly testing office equipment to ensure they are in a safe and useable condition or establishing company security processes for personnel in the workplace, having too many measures would be better than not having enough. But this comes with the risk of not allowing staff to move freely in the office and be comfortable and it can be expensive to maintain.

Therefore, both from an internal and external aspect, careful consideration is required for what is best for the business and its property. To help you decide what would be necessary, here are 5 widely recognised and accepted safety procedures that modern offices should have.

Review how safe the building is and test equipment internally

In assessing the safety and security of your building, to firstly ascertain how securethe structure is, is a sensible step to start with.

For this a building diagnostics is commonly recommended and from this, any faults in the structure of the building are identified. These defects may mean intruders can break in more easily. For building diagnostics investigations, a thermal imaging camera is frequently used due to it being a non-destructive way of analysing for defects in a structure and also because it allows for findings to be made that would not have been seen by the naked eye.

Inside the building, also be sure to establish regular inspections on the safety of electrical appliances in the office. For this, PAT testing equipment is used to check the safety of your electricals through a series of electronic tests and visual inspections. This can be carried out by a professional on a yearly basis.

Establish security processes

From a personnel perspective, a risk assessment of how secure an office is will provide you with valuable details of the day to day activities in the office and what precautions and processes required to be implemented to ensure for the safety of employees. For example, if it is obvious there are points in the working day where people will be coming in and out of the office regularly, it increases the risk of an intruder coming into the office without being seen. For this, it would be recommended that security processes and equipment can be used such as key card access.

Visitor books for non-employees are also commonly used to track who has come into the office, and also importantly for the situation of emergency evacuations to ensure everyone is out of the building.

Installing security cameras

The threat of an office burglary is a major issue that all businesses do not want to experience. Most workplaces today will have expensive computers and other high value technology which makes them a prime target for thieves.

Installing security cameras are often used to safeguard against this threat both for the protection of a business’ and staff’s personal possessions. By positioning them in key and valuable areas both inside and outside of your property, security cameraswill come in highly valuable for should a burglary occur, you have the ability to refer back and view recordings for any unusual activities as a point of evidence for the crime.

With surveillance in place, the cameras would provide an immediate increase in sense of security for employees and positively they also act as effective deterrent for thieves who are thinking about carrying out an act of burglary.

Asset tagging possessions

With the capacity to be able to recover items in the event of an office burglary, asset tagging expensive valuable possessions in an office has become a popular security measure in recent times to protect against theft. The microchips that are used for the tagging are often miniature enough in size where it is difficult to be seen and by having them asset tagged it means it will come with a unique identification code, allowing it to be traced and returned to the owner in the event of a burglary.

Due to the size of the microchips used, it can be regarded that asset tagging is more of an incognito security measure. And with this, whereas security cameras may provide an obvious obstacle for thieves should they decide to target an office, asset tagging has also proven to be a very effective disincentive in stopping thieves as they are problematic in the fact they cannot be spotted by the naked eye and therefore comes with a risk factor of getting caught should they steal any possessions with asset tagging.

Online protection

Office safes can safeguard against theft of confidential documents containing high security client information or employee personal details. But as well as these physical possessions and the expensive equipment that offices will hold, in today’s modern offices, there is now another crucial area that must be protected - a business’ data and online information.

Cyber threats and hacks have been major headline news in recent times and should your company ever be effected it can be very harmful due to the level of sensitive information that is at risk if it is accessed and stolen. Therefore, it is fundamental for businesses today to protect against this threat.

As it is necessary for the day to day running of business, most companies entrust their employees with sensitive and confidential data. And for this, to prevent data breaches and theft, positively it is now seen as necessity that modern businesses must have a trusted and stable security software established for their IT infrastructure. It is critical this infrastructure and system is regularly up to date with the latest software and aim to be in regular contact with an IT protection and security expert to check that protection meets all necessary requirements to defend your business against cyber threats.